Steven CW Taylor is a cultural explorer, photographer, and engineer who approaches a practice he is developing called The Way of Inquiry: An Openness to Encounter.

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Born and raised in East Germantown, Philadelphia, like many kids, Taylor grew up with football dreams. Making it out of the hood and buying mommy a new house. Football took him to college, where he earned a criminal justice degree from Saint Peter's University. A job as a youth correctional officer for the Washington D.C. took him to D.C. after college, where he met a girl in McDonald's, that led to a data entry position at Booz Allen Hamilton, which led, through curiosity for the unknown and the gracious knowledge from people he encountered along the way, to a thirteen-year career at Booz, most of them as a back-end computer systems engineer. 

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During a three-year sabbatical from the corporate sphere, photography found him through GoPro in early 2014. His eagerness to learn how the machine worked he made many alterations to the GoPros in an effort to "make them do what a DSLR can do." This was the ISO, Aperture, Shutter-Speed foundation in which the camera became the instrument for his inquiry to travel with. Nineteen countries. Three US national parks. His beloved Philadelphia. Drawing from those travels, especially in Kenya, Taylor's work is shaped by a commitment to openness and dignity as keys to liberation. He finds deep inspiration in the philosophy of Ubuntu — I am because we are — the Japanese principle of Wabi-Sabi, finding beauty in imperfection, the ritual of Chanoyu, the Japanese tea ceremony, and Monkey D. Luffy of One Piece fame.

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Akin to Francis Bacon's Merchants of Light, he has sailed into far-off lands, gathered what his community could not reach, and returned it for the good of all to engage with. Okakura Kakuzo's The Book of Tea taught him to see his life through a philosophy he had been living, but did not yet have the words for. 

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With The Book of Tea as his bible of sorts, and the more than 5000 conversations in dialogue of thinking out loud with others, held through the gallery. The language is beginning its form.

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He calls it the Way of Inquiry. An unfettered openness to every encounter, every country, every culture that builds a way of seeing and combating internal bias. An orientation that can be developed, where each inquiry leads organically into the next, prompted by encounters with people, places, or things that give you the missing intellect needed to begin the process of discovery. Where the journey is more important than the destination, and each discovery should be the prerequisite for the next inquiry. This is what Steven is calling The Way of Inquiry: An Openness to Encounter.

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He forgoes spectacle in favor of an ongoing, sincere inquiry into what it means to live freely — on his own terms, in community, and with integrity.